German Problems and Personalities Part 17

10. Any permanent peace settlement must involve the unreserved acceptance of a new political philosophy and the practice of a new political system. No peace is possible through the old methods of a balance of power, of alliances and counter-alliances, of a.s.surance and rea.s.surance treaties. Any balance of power is unstable and precarious and can only be maintained by a compet.i.tion of armaments. The distinction between offensive and defensive alliances is essentially unreal. Under the old dispensation a defensive alliance became offensive as soon as it felt strong enough to a.s.sume the offensive. It is the system of alliances which led to armaments, and not the armaments which were responsible for the alliances. It is therefore futile to speak of disarmament as long as we do not repudiate the traditional European principle of the "balance of power."

11. It also follows as a corollary that no peace is possible merely through a readjustment of boundaries, through compensations and annexations of territories. We might recast the whole map of Europe, we might dismember the German Empire, we might dismember the Austrian Empire, we might dismember the Turkish Empire, and yet entirely fail to achieve the objects for which we entered the war. On the other hand, we might achieve those objects without shifting one single milestone of the political boundaries of Europe.

12. We must clearly realize that the issue of peace and war is not a military issue, but a political issue, and that the political issue itself is a moral issue. It is not a _Machtfrage_, but a _Rechtfrage_.

It is not a question to be settled by diplomats of the old school; it can only be solved by constructive and democratic statesmanship.

13. To say that "we must crush Prussian militarism" is only a vague and unsatisfactory way of stating that we must establish democratic government. Militarism is not a matter of foreign policy, but of domestic policy. Militarism is but the _ultima ratio_ of reaction, and all nations are allies against the one common enemy, reactionary government.

14. It is therefore futile to say that the future congress must not interfere in the internal government of any belligerent Power. If any European Power after this war were still to be ruled by a reactionary government based on brute force and oppression, that government would still have to maintain a large army in order to keep down the liberties of its people, and such an army would sooner or later be used against the foreign enemy in the name of imperial national aspirations, in the name of a higher civilizing mission.

15. Therefore, the one problem before the European Congress is to establish government in Europe on a const.i.tutional and democratic basis, and to grant a _Magna Carta_ to all nations, great and small.

The establishment of such a government, and not any annexations or compensations, would alone guarantee a permanent peace.

16. All civilized nations must be equally interested in the maintenance of peace and in the establishment of the new international order. Therefore, all neutral nations, including the United States of America, must join the congress as signatories and guarantors of the peace settlement.

17. The new democratic charter shall be placed under the guardianship of a Supreme Const.i.tutional Court. Such a Court would not be a secret diplomatic Sanhedrin, but a democratic Tribunal. Such a Court would be essentially different from the Hague Tribunals of the past, and the democracies of the world would be directly interested in enforcing its decrees.

18. There is one immediate sanction to the const.i.tutional settlement just outlined-namely, the Sovereign Will of the people of Europe.

Revolution is knocking at the door. Unless a const.i.tutional charter be granted, unless democratic government be firmly established in Europe, it will be wrested from their rulers by the nations themselves. All the signs of the times confirm us in the conviction that the only alternative to the establishment of democratic government for all the nations partic.i.p.ating in the congress is universal civil war. The peacemakers of to-morrow have it in their power not only to crush "Prussian militarism," but to prevent an appalling upheaval which would shake human society to its foundations.

APPENDIX

THE PRIVATE MORALITY OF THE PRUSSIAN KINGS

FREDERICK WILLIAM II.: THE HOHENZOLLERN POLYGAMIST

BY ALBERT SOREL

It is generally a.s.sumed, even by those writers who are most strongly opposed to the sinister policy of the Hohenzollerns, that at least their domestic relations present an edifying contrast with the private immorality of the other Royal Houses of Europe. The world has been made familiar with the Court scandals of the Habsburgs, the Bourbons, and the Georges, and has heard little of the Hohenzollern Dynasty. But that is merely because the "amours" and the family squabbles of the Hohenzollerns are so much less picturesque and so much less interesting than those of a Henry IV. or of a Louis XIV., and because they have been hidden under a thick cloud of hypocrisy. The most brilliant of French historians, Monsieur Albert Sorel, has torn the veil from this hypocrisy and has laid bare the sordid story of Frederick William II.

As an ill.u.s.tration of the manner in which the official historians of Prussia have narrated the history of the dynasty, it is instructive to compare the following character-sketch of the successor of Frederick the Great with the idealist portrait of Treitschke ("Germany History," vol. i.), who would make us believe that Frederick William II. was a paragon of all the private virtues.

I.

Frederick the Great's base tolerance produced dissolvent effects. Not proceeding from respect of religious beliefs, it engendered contempt for them. As, apart from the curb of religion, the new society of Prussia had no tradition of social morals to rely upon, corruption entered in and consumed it. The King's scepticism took possession of his subjects, who translated it into deeds. It was good "form"; everyone in Berlin took it up and conducted himself accordingly. The leaven of licence and sensuality which mars all the literature of the century fermented without let or hindrance in those coa.r.s.e souls. An immature civilization had overstimulated imaginations and senses without abating the brutality of the primitive pa.s.sions. In Prussia people lacked the delicate taste, the genteel habits, the light wit, which in France qualified the depravity of the age. A heavy dissoluteness was paraded in Prussia. Officials, the gentry, women, all fed their minds on d'Holbach and La Mettrie, taking their doctrines seriously and applying them to the very letter.

Add to this that in the newly built Prussian capital society, utterly artificial as it was, an improvised amalgam of incongruous elements, was predisposed, so to speak, to dissoluteness. Berlin swarmed with army men who had no family life and whose whole day was not occupied with military duties. Men of letters, adventurers of the pen and of the sword, attracted by Frederick's reputation and reduced to intrigue and all sorts of expedients for a living; a n.o.bility, very poor, very proud, very exclusive, weighed down by royal discipline and thoroughly bored; a bourgeoisie enlightened, enriched, but relegated to a place of its own; between these groups, separated one from the other by etiquette or prejudice, a sort of demi-monde where they met, chatted and enjoyed themselves at their ease, the foyer of "French ideas," the hub of affairs and intrigues-Jewish society, the richest and most elegant in Berlin. With the marvellous pliancy of their race the Jews had a.s.similated the new civilization and took their revenge from the political exclusion of which they were the victims by bringing together in their salons all the intellectual men in Berlin, all the attractive women, all desirous of liberty and freed from prejudice.

Such was Berlin in the days of Frederick.

II.

One of the finest cities in Europe, wrote Forster in 1779; but the Berliners! Sociability and refined taste, he found, degenerated in them into sensuality, into libertinage (he might almost say voracity), freedom of wit and love of shining in shameless licence and unrestrained debauch of thought. The women in general were abandoned.

An English diplomat, Sir John Harris, afterwards Lord Malmesbury, had the same impression: Berlin was a town where, if _fortis_ might be translated by "honourable," you could say that there was not a _vir fortis nec femina casta_.

If you consider that outside Jewish homes money was scarce, and that temptations are all the stronger the less means you have of satisfying them, you can see why in many minds disorder of ideas and corruption of morals opened a new wound, the most dangerous, in sooth, and the most repugnant in nations-venality. Mirabeau, in his "Secret History," indelibly recorded all the vices of _ce n.o.ble tripot_, Berlin. On this head his famous pamphlet is a picture in violent colours, but true nevertheless. Cynicism there seems merely local colour. "'Rottenness before Ripeness'-I am very much afraid that must be the motto of Prussian power.... What cannot money do in a house so poor?"

III.

It required Frederick's hand of iron to set in motion these complicated springs, to regulate the unwieldy machine, keep together these elements collected with no little ingenuity and ready to go to pieces. But that hand was weighty and hard. There were signs, in the upper cla.s.ses at all events-the only cla.s.ses then taken into account-of a sort of m.u.f.fled revolt against this implacable disciple.

Besides, the Prussians entertained queer illusions as to the future.

Frederick had deceived his subjects just as he had deceived himself regarding the durability of his work. They did not understand to what an extent their power was the personal power of their King. Proud to the point of infatuation of the role he had made them play, they imagined it was their own doing, and that Frederick's soul would survive in them. They expected from a new reign the same glory abroad, the same security at home, the same relative prosperity, with a yoke less rough and a discipline less severe, not understanding that the very roughness of the yoke and the severity of the discipline were conditions necessary to the duration of the work. The mercantile protective system, which had built up industry; the administration of taxes, which poured money into the State coffers; the economy, which immobilized this money in the treasury, hampered and irritated all who wished to work and trade, all who reflected on the natural conditions of commerce and industry; but it was these things alone that enabled the poorest Government in Europe to be better armed than the richest, and to keep in the van. In a word, people wanted the spring to relax, and failed to see that to slacken the spring meant annihilating the State.

IV.

To reform Frederick's monarchy would have required no less genius than it took to create it. Reform, however, was indispensable, since Frederick alone was capable of holding up the composite edifice he had built. Hence a threatening and wellnigh inevitable catastrophe. "All will go on almost of its own accord, so long as foreign affairs are quiet and unbroken," wrote Mirabeau after Frederick's death. "But at the first gunshot or at the first stormy situation the whole of this little scaffolding of mediocrity will topple to the ground. How all these underling Ministers would crumple up! How everyone, from the distracted chief to the convict-gang, would shout for a pilot! Who would that pilot be?"

V.

Frederick's nephew, who was called upon to succeed him, was not made for so great a role. In every respect he offered a complete contrast to the Prince whose weighty heritage he took up. Frederick in person was infirm and sober; all his prestige lay in the gaze of his great eyes, which, as Mirabeau put it, "at the will of his heroic soul, carried fascination or terror." Frederick William II. was a _bel homme_, highly sanguine, very robust, fond of violent exercise and coa.r.s.e pleasures. "The build and strength of a Royal Guardsman," wrote the French Minister d'Esterno, who had no liking for him. "An enormous machine of flesh," said an Austrian diplomat who saw him at Pillnitz in 1791. "The true type of a King," according to Metternich, who was presented to him in 1792 at Coblenz, at the time of the German crusade against France and the Revolution. "His stature," he added, "was gigantic, and his corpulence in keeping. In every company he stood a head higher than the surrounding crowd. His manners were n.o.ble and engaging." He expressed himself with a certain effort, in little abrupt phrases. There was nothing in him to recall the implacable and sovereign irony of Frederick.

"His look," said one apologist, "does not betoken a man of genius, but German candour shines on his brow." Strange candour, scarcely recognizable if you take the word in its common and proper sense. It must be taken, as was then the practice in Germany, through translations of Rousseau, in the equivocal and refined acceptation which reconciled innocence with indecency, virtue with every disorder of the imagination and the heart. Ecstatic and sensual, devout and licentious, a prey to violent appet.i.tes, tormented by scruples, superst.i.tious and debauched, believing in ghosts, with a tendency towards cabal, Frederick William had a taste for ethics and a feeling for religion. He spoke of them with respect, with awe, with emotion.

In his case it was a natural penchant and at the same time a pose, the att.i.tude of every heir-presumptive towards the crowned head, a way of winning admiration and captivating by force of contrast.

VI.

He and those around him might be gulled by this "German candour." Not so Frederick. In his Memoirs he draws his nephew as he was in 1765, at the age of twenty-one, at the time of his first marriage with Elizabeth of Brunswick: "The young husband, without any morals, given over to a life of debauchery, was daily guilty of infidelity to his wife. The Princess, who was in the flower of her beauty, was shocked at the slight regard shown for her charms. Soon she plunged into excesses almost as bad as her husband's." In 1769 they were divorced.

Frederick William married a Princess of Darmstadt. The second marriage was no happier than the first. The Princess did not retaliate, though she did not lack incentives to do so. The Prince lapsed back into his dissolute habits. Apart from many pa.s.sing fancies, he had a recognized mistress-in-chief. This person, who managed always to retain the favour, if not the love, of Frederick William, was the daughter of a humble musician. She married the Prince's _valet de chambre_, became Madame Rietz, and was afterwards made Countess of Lichtenau. Frederick William by the first marriage had had a daughter, Princess Frederica, who was brought up by the Queen, the discarded, not to say repudiated, wife of Frederick the Great. The father, when visiting the girl, fell in love with one of her maids-of-honour. Her name was Mademoiselle de Voss, and she came of a good house, being cousin to one of the King's Ministers, M. de Finckenstein, and sister of a President of the Chamber. "This beauty, who to my mind is very ugly," wrote Mirabeau, "is a mixture of prudery and cynicism, of affectation and ingenuousness; she has a natural wit of a kind, some schooling, manias rather than desires, a gaucherie which she strives to cover by an appearance of _navete_.... All her charm lies in her complexion, and even that I find wan rather than white; a very beautiful neck. It was this mixture of unique licence, they say, which she combined with the airs of innocent ignorance and vestal severity, that captivated the Prince."

VII.

Frederick William was one of those complex libertines who find in clever resistance a whet to their pa.s.sion and a solace to their scruples. The siege of Mademoiselle de Voss lasted nearly two years.

The outs and ins of this strange romance were the common talk of the Court. It had not yet reached its denouement when Frederick the Great's death stopped its course for several weeks. King from August 17, 1786, onwards, Frederick William seemed to forget everything but affairs of State. But Mirabeau affirms, after September 8, "the fervour of the novice began to abate." Mademoiselle de Voss, he added, was on the point of yielding. The King, to make her comfortable, had set up an establishment for his daughter Frederica; Mademoiselle de Voss did the honours. The year pa.s.sed, however, without the vestal's surrendering. She loved the King, but the honour of the family still weighed more with her than love. She set rigorous conditions to her capitulation: a left-handed marriage, the written consent of the Queen, and the removal of the t.i.tular mistress, Madame Rietz. On this last point the King was inflexible; he gave in on the other two. The Queen gave her consent, with the stipulation that there should be no real divorce or public separation; she kept her t.i.tle of Queen and her position as lawful wife. The rest, it appears, was of no great interest to her. It only remained to conclude the marriage, but, under the circ.u.mstances, that was a delicate and ticklish business.

By hook or by crook a precedent had to be found: the Prussian Consistory proved amenable, and authorized the marriage. The marriage was celebrated in July, 1787, in the Chapel Royal of Charlottenburg.

Mademoiselle de Voss took the t.i.tle of Countess of Ingenheim. Her happiness was short-lived. She died in the month of March, 1789. "All Berlin is in mourning," wrote M. d'Esterno. "The Countess of Ingenheim is cruelly regretted by the people, the royal family, and even the Queen, much less for the person of the said Countess as because of the increase of credit which her death will bring to Dame Rietz, the old habitual mistress, who is said to be very avaricious and a great intriguer."

VIII.

The literature of the day shed tears over the royal bereavement, celebrated the "virtues" of this susceptible monarch, and contrasted with the withering scepticism of Voltaire and the criminal frivolity of the French the tender abandon with which Frederick William gave himself up to "nature's sweetest inclination." "Women-haters," wrote Baron de Trenck, "have been the scourges of humanity. The King of Prussia has a great soul, full of sensibility; in love he is capable of a tender attachment: he knows the value of his mistress. Supposing he gives her a million, the money is divided among the members of the household who are citizens. He will not rob an honest man of the spouse who const.i.tutes his happiness, he will not sacrifice Rome for Cleopatra. He wants to please all by himself. For twenty months he courted Mademoiselle de Voss, he married her, he was faithful to her, he wept over her ashes. Every citizen wise enough to know human weaknesses must wish that if he made a fresh choice it would fall on an object as worthy of his heart. So let him enjoy a happiness which belongs to the simple peasant as it does to kings." This hypocritical twaddle, this licentious casuistry, was "very good style" in Germany then, and was highly appreciated.

IX.

The distraction which Trenck desired for the afflicted soul of the King was not long in presenting itself. In 1790, on the anniversary of the Countess of Ingenheim's death, Mademoiselle Dnhof was presented at Court. Everyone there was busy consoling Frederick William. A claimant had even been put forward in the person of a young lady called Viereck, a friend of Mademoiselle de Voss, who had taken the latter's place with Princess Frederica. Unhappily for Mademoiselle Viereck's friends, she was dark and in no way recalled the dear departed. Mademoiselle Dnhof, on the other hand, was, according to the French Minister, "so perfectly fair that, while pretty in artificial light, in daylight she was as yellow as a lemon." With the same charms as Mademoiselle de Voss, she had the same jumble of pietism and virtue. It was once more a case of marrying. The King saw no difficulty in the way. "I am separated from the Queen," he wrote to Mademoiselle Dnhof; "Madame d'Ingenheim has left me a widower; I offer you my heart and hand." He made no concealment of it, openly declaring that he had grounds for repudiating the Queen, but he refrained from taking action upon them in order to maintain the dignity of the throne.

The Consistory did not require to deliberate a second time; precedents had been established, and they were followed. The marriage took place on April 10, 1790, and it was the Court preacher, Zllner, who consecrated it, as he had consecrated that with Mademoiselle de Voss.